


Fallout

by Todesengel



Series: Fascination [3]
Category: Voltron: Lion Voltron
Genre: Dark, Gen, PTSD, Post-Rape, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-17
Updated: 2011-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:14:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't pick his crew on their ability to lie; right now, he wishes he had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallout

Keith, like every recruit from Hephaestion, only learned to use his eyes after he was strapped into a flight simulator and was immediately rendered 'blind', cut off from touch and smell and sound, set a drift in a darkness that was in no way comforting in its totality of absence. He'd lasted exactly two seconds before he started to scream, to claw at his own flesh, just to make sure he still existed.

It had been one hell of an object lesson and when he'd crawled out of the sim, badly shaken and so relieved to smell the harsh stench of unwashed bodies and machine-baked air that he actually wept a little, he had a whole new understanding of why so many of the Off Worlders who came to the crystal mines where he'd been born never stayed for very long; and why they'd seek out the blinding places, where even the smallest light became the center of a sun, burning their eyes away just to see a bit of light. Total disorientation was new to him, and he could definitively say that he didn't like it. And he'd despaired, a little, at ever making it into space: why _would_ he be chosen, after all, when he could barely function in a sim, when he blacked out from being cut off from everything that grounded him, oriented him, told him of his place in the world, when he had to work ten times as hard to deaden his elevated senses that had served him so well in the mines but would kill him quicker than a cave-in here. Worked fifty times harder to train himself to rely on his eyes, even though the knowledge that eyes betrayed was too deeply embedded in his self to ever be truly forgotten.

Then he got shot into space, and he understood why the Brass kept him and every other mole from Hephaestion around. Because while his classmates cowered in fear at the sight of the black nothingness they found themselves in, cringed as they thought about all that weight pressing down on them, the deep vacuum of the uncaring universe held back by sheets of metal that were practically non-existent in the grand scheme of things, Keith found it all very...comforting. It felt like home, in some strange way; perhaps it was because of the darkness that surrounded their ship, or the way the light didn't twinkle but gleamed cold and hard, like sunlight striking a crystal seam.

He'd had the grace not to gloat when the same asses who'd laughed at him for shivering and gasping every time he got into a sim were reduced to cowering balls of fear that mewled for their mothers every time they looked out a viewport.

He'd thought the ships were home, thought they were as safe as the mountain he'd left.

He didn't think so now.

Keith stared, hard, at the control panel before him, counted every dial, all the grooves, examined the scratches and dents and imperfections in minute detail. It wasn't enough to deaden the awareness of how he stank, of the feel of the collar, of the ache of his body, of the taste that still lingered in his mouth.

 _Calm_ , he reminded himself. _Center. It's over now._

But as many times as he repeated the words to himself, he couldn't find his balance, couldn't believe that this wasn't just a nightmare his mind tortured him with. Couldn't believe he wouldn't wake up, chained and gagged, to the feel of Zarkon's whip ripping into his flesh; to the feel of Zarkon ripping into him, period.

Or, worse, to experience that sickening combination of sound and sight and smell and feel of Zarkon ripping into his team, grinning at him over their writhing bodies, scales stained with their blood.

He began to tremble, again, and the bit of chain attached to his collar jangled loudly and discordantly in his ears.

 _Calm_ he told himself. _Focus._

Keith brought his eyes back to the top of the control panel, stared hard at the dials in front of him. This was easy. This was safe. This was a trick to get his mind safely away from fear, to lose himself in the concentration it required to see the panel, to not ignore what his eyes were telling him, to block out smell and touch and sound until the only thing that existed was the sight of the panel before him. The blinking lights. The alien writing.

He was aware of Lance long before he turned around, long before Lance had crossed even half the space from the door to where he sat, failing miserably at coping.

"We couldn't find a cutter, but, um." Lance stopped, a good three meters back, and he held out a laser pistol like it was a peace offering. "This'll get the collar off, anyway. D'you want--"

"I can do it."

Lance nodded and tossed him the gun, and they both studiously ignored the fact that it would have been easier -- not to mention safer -- if Lance had been the one to cut the collar off.

"Hunk's got a temporary shower set up," Lance said after awhile. "Near as we can tell, the lizards use sand instead of water, although there's a pretty big reservoir. Hunk figures we can skimp on the drinking for a little bit, and we found some soap and clothing."

"Doom?"

Lance shook his head. "Human. Or at least humanoid. More or less your size. Good quality too."

Keith grunted his thanks, but Lance didn't leave, just shifted from one foot to the next. Each rocking step made the leather of his jacket creak, released a new wave of that old-leather smell that Keith was beginning to hate.

And that depressed him, because he used to love the way Lance smelled.

The collar fell away and hit the ground with a clatter. Keith put down the gun and touched his neck, touched the raw spots where the steel had made him bleed. He stood, slowly, and looked at the soap and clothing Lance held in his arms.

"Where's Sven?"

"Looking after Pidge." Lance shifted his weight again. "Look, Keith," he began, then stopped, apparently thinking better of whatever he had been about to say. He handed Keith the soap and clothes, instead, and said, "The soap's pretty harsh. Go easy on it."

Keith grunted again. He followed Lance to the shower, and even though there couldn't possibly be anything left of his body that Lance hadn't seen, he still waited for Lance to leave before he stripped down and stepped underneath the hose Hunk had set up. The water was wonderfully hot, and as Keith washed his body clean, he thought about what he was going to say in his mission report; it was easier to think about that then to think about what he was washing off, like forcing himself to see with his eyes. The litany of his failures sprang easily to mind, and he said them over and over again as he ran the harsh soap across his skin.

His team: captured, imprisoned, beaten, and branded.

Himself: raped, repeatedly.

Pidge: raped, as a direct result of his actions.

The mission: a failure, bungled most spectacularly.

He wasn't aware that he'd scrubbed himself raw until Sven pulled him out of the shower and wrestled the soap from his hands. In the absence of the bitter smell of the soap and the sudden cessation of the water, the smell of his blood was almost overpowering. He opened his mouth, not sure of what he should say, of what he should do.

"The rest of us want to shower too."

Such a blatant lie, but Keith was happy enough to accept it, to be complicit in this cover up and ignore the real reason Sven had pulled him out from underneath the water. So he just nodded and dried himself off with a little more care than he'd used when showering, and ignored the fact that he still didn't feel clean.

~

"Any one you can walk away from, right?" Lance said, trying to joke. His face was pale, and full of pain, and he didn't walk so much as limp, leaning heavily on Hunk's arm and trying to put as little pressure as possible on his left leg. Even in the darkness, the white of his shattered bone shone brightly.

"Right," Keith told him, because lying was easier than facing the truth right now, and worrying about Lance was easier than worrying about himself, or the fact that there was nothing around him except open air and the vast emptiness was terrifying. "Nice piloting."

"Thanks." The grin fell away as Lance gasped and retched from the pain as he accidentally stepped down too hard.

Keith turned away and felt helpless. He couldn't get his bearings, too confused by all the sound and smells that assaulted him. He couldn't even tell when Sven returned, appearing out of the darkness like a demon, soaked by the rain and mist.

"There's a castle," he said. "I think it's the only thing around here that's inhabited."

"Friendlies?"

"Couldn't tell." Sven looked over at Lance, a brief flicker of his eyes. "It's our best hope. He needs more medical attention than I can provide."

Keith grunted his affirmative. "Right. I'll take point."

And it was cowardice that made him say that because just the thought of having all that living darkness behind him made Keith's skin crawl and his hands tremble. There was no comfort here, where his ears spoke to him of monsters rustling in bushes, and his mind turned those noises into Doom soldiers, sent to haul him back into that cold, barren room where Zarkon waited.

He led the way across the open stretch of field between the forest they'd crashed in and the castle that rose out of the mists, kept low and moved slow for Lance's sake. With every breath he smelled greenery and growth and peace, and maybe he would have relaxed if it hadn't been so damn open, if he hadn't glanced up and seen the stars twinkling high above him, with nothing between him and them except empty air. Familiar dread made his belly twist, and it wasn't until he was almost to the door of the castle that he realized he hadn't thought about Zarkon or Doom or anything except getting a roof over his head the entire way from the forest, of blocking out that frightening view of vast, empty, unfiltered sky.

He filed that knowledge away for later.

The doors were heavy and it took a great deal of effort to force them open, and when they finally swung open he and Sven and Hunk went sprawling on the ground. Not precisely dignified, but they were indoors.

Keith pushed his hair out of his face, slowly stood up. There was someone out there, someone who had been startled at their entrance -- startled and afraid, and if that someone was armed then there could be trouble. Keith moved to stand in front of his team for all the good that would do. The blinding brightness of a sudden torch flaring up from somewhere in the darkness before him made him wince and put a hand in front of his eyes. He still couldn't see, but at least the stabbing pain wasn't as bad.

"We're unarmed," he called out, "and injured. Our ship crashed--"

"Aye, we saw that." An older voice, a man who'd smoked a bit, but that didn't mean much, especially if he had friends. "Go back to your master and tell him that he'll find no quarter here."

"We come in peace." And even as he said that in his calmest voice, Keith was surreptitiously letting his other hand drift down to where his own laser was hidden. "We were captured by Doom, and during our escape we were fired on. One of my crew is seriously injured--"

Again he was cut off, but this time it was by the sudden flash of a laser that cut through the air with a sharp whine and deeply scored the stone by his feet. Keith brought his hand out from behind his back, let it dangle limply by his side.

"We won't be fooled by your lies."

"I'm not lying." He stepped aside, slightly, just enough to give the man in the darkness a glimpse of Lance. He moved back in front before the man could shift his attention onto his team, held his hands out away from his sides. "Please, just treat him."

"Keith I'll be fine," Lance said, softly, and Keith wouldn't have believed his lie even if Lance's voice hadn't been shaky with pain.

"Please."

"Coran, perhaps. Perhaps these are the ones Father sent." A girl's voice, soft and young. Keith squinted into the darkness, even though he still couldn't see anything.

"Princess, their ship was identified as one of the Prince's. They could be spies."

"It will be all right, Coran."

There was a disapproving snort from the man, but Keith already knew his team would be given shelter for the night, so he inclined his head, slightly and said, simply, "Thank you."

The light moved and Keith registered a quick flash of blond and pink before he refocused his attention on his team. It was easy to fill his mind with helping Hunk carry Lance up the stairs to the castle's infirmary, with making sure the cuts on Pidge's chest and back were looked at, with chasing Hunk and Sven out of the infirmary and into the rooms the girl showed them to, ordering them to sleep.

When he finally went to his room, heavy with the smell of disuse, he tried to fill his mind with other things, other thoughts. But the white noise he'd hidden in faded away and all he was left with was the truth of his life, of what had happened to him and what he had done, and he couldn't hide from that. Not when every touch, every scent, every sound reminded him of Doom and he jumped and gasped and trembled because he could feel the sharp pressure of Zarkon's claws on his back, smell his fetid breath as he laughed low and cruel, taste the harsh bitterness of his spunk. The memory sense was too strong in the darkness, too real, and Keith didn't want to think of what horrors would pursue him in his sleep, so he flipped on all of the lights in his room so that he could memorize every detail and kept himself awake until he passed out in the infirmary the next morning, between one bit of mildly burned toast and the next, listening to Sven and Hunk argue about the relative defensibility of this castle.

He woke up when Pidge stumbled against the bed he was sitting on, making it shake so that all the bolts and nuts and bits of metal sounded like his chains rattling as his body swayed from Zarkon's beatings. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming, because he knew that screaming only made Zarkon hornier and he preferred the feel of the whip to the feel of Zarkon thrusting into him.

It took him a long, confused moment before his mind caught up with time and when he finally remembered that this wasn't Doom and that the pale light filtering in through the grungy windows wasn't a torch stuck in a scone outside a cell door, Sven had casually put a napkin into his hand and Hunk was talking about an integrated electronic security system with Pidge and Lance was engrossed with playing with his bed's hydraulics.

Keith didn't think he'd ever felt as grateful as he did right then.

He spent a week like that, snatching bits of troubled sleep when the sun shone on a planet full of life and the noise of his team, free and loud in that freedom, cast out his demons. One week of listening to this blond, foolish princess and her grumbling, suspicious advisor; one week of searching for keys, of watching myth become reality; one week of keeping the lights in his room burning as he did everything he could to not fall asleep and not dream and not fear.

He ran out of new ways to keep himself occupied around the third night. By night seven he was seriously considering rearranging his furniture, and it was with only half a mind that he opened his door when he heard the knocking.

"Hey boss, I got this great idea," Hunk said as he entered, arms full of diagrams and blue prints and three pencils -- two red and one white -- stuck behind his ear. He kicked the door shut with his foot and dropped the rolls of paper onto the foot of Keith's bed. "I was going over these plans with Pidge until I got kicked out of the infirmary and -- you're not going to sleep for a while, right? -- Anyway, we were trying to figure out how you work the damn things." He unrolled one of the pieces of paper, cursed under his breath as it curled back up into a loose tube. He turned away, began poking around, looking for weights. "Hey, hold that edge down, will you? Right. Where was I?" Hunk paused, scratched at his head with the end of one of his pencils.

"The Lions," Keith prompted. He unrolled a blueprint, put one hand on the near corner and -- he had to stretch out until he lay along the length of the bed before he could reach the far corner, but he did. The neat, tiny rows of numbers that so fascinated Pidge and Hunk swam before his eyes; he'd never been very good at close work. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of old paper, listened to it crinkle as he moved, and it reminded him of the maps of his youth, the mines and shafts and tunnels all captured on paper, their names and numbers written in the short hand Braille of his people. As a child, he'd run his hands over his father's maps and known his city better than any surface crawler could have known his own house.

He ran his hand over the blue print and felt only the bumps and valleys of age, but those were familiar too, and he smiled at the sense memories they held.

"Lions." Hunk made soft humming noises -- his thinking noises as Keith had learned over the years. Gilbert and Sullivan tonight, which meant he was shifting through his memories to find his train of thought. "Right! Yes. So, Pidge and I think we've figured out what some of the buttons on those consoles do. Besides make the damn things roar loud enough to break all of the windows." Footsteps across the room and then more crinkling noises as Hunk weighted down the other ends of the blueprint. "So we were mucking around in Yellow this afternoon, mostly pushing buttons to see what would happen -- we took precautions, don't worry -- and damned if she didn't up and take out one of the castle wings. Uh. We don't have to pay for that, right? Never mind." The bed creaked as Hunk sat down. "Not important, probably should have been torn down long ago. Anyway, turns out the Lions' claws are projectiles -- and they replenish themselves. We're not sure how many missiles each one carries, but given what the plans say here and here," scratching noises, which surely meant something to Hunk but to Keith they were nothing more than the sound of him writing on the old blue prints, "I think that a conservative estimate is maybe ten rounds. What would be really helpful is if we could strip one of them down, see exactly what made 'em tick."

He paused, and Keith said, "Go on, I'm listening." Or perhaps he just dreamed that he'd said the words, because Hunk's rumbling voice melded into the rumble of the mine carts that formed the background noise to a pleasant dream of running through the caverns back home, chasing his brother through crystal forests that sang like morning in their passing, and when Keith woke, it was morning and Hunk was sitting in a chair nearby, snoring and drooling.

Hunk had ended up using one of his blue prints as a blanket, and he woke up with a snort when Keith tried to take it off. He blinked, slowly, dumbly, scratched his belly, then grinned the charming, disarming grin that always suckered people into missing his right hook. "Sorry, Keith. Must've fallen asleep." He got up, stretched to the accompaniment of several protracted groans. "Damn. I'm too old for this shit."

"Go take a shower," Keith said. He looked around at the papers that littered his floor and bed. "I'll clean up here."

"Sure thing, boss." Hunk stretched again and stumbled out of the room, muttering about chairs and beds and Lions.

Keith bent down and began to roll the blue prints up. He knew, of course, that Hunk's nocturnal visit had been anything but an accident, but, as he immersed himself in the busy work of making sure the plans ended up in tight, orderly rolls, he found that he didn't really care. He didn't have much pride left, and what tattered remnants remained didn't care that his team saw him weakened; they had seen much worse from him and Keith was wise enough to know that he was worse than worthless as a leader right now, twitching and jumpy and dazed from lack of sleep.

Which was why he didn't shut the door in Sven's face when he came around that night, claiming that he'd blown a fuse in his room and just wanted a place to read before turning in. Keith opened the door and didn't fuss when Sven grabbed his wrist to stop him from pacing, made him lie down on the bed and listen to long passages of what sounded like Arusian fairy tales.

"You're a rotten liar," he yawned during a lull.

"You didn't hire me for my lying skills," Sven told him.

"Didn't hire you for your ability to tell bedtime stories either. Both could use substantial improvement." Keith blinked, slowly and yawned again. "Well. Go on," he said, and Sven obliged.

~

"He has spoken to me. He has told me where the last key is. We must visit his grave."

Keith looked up from the piece of electronic equipment he was pretending to fix. The princess smiled at him, beatific in her delusions.

"His... grave," Pidge said, slowly and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"It's not far." She grabbed a lantern and beckoned for the others to follow. "We don't have to go far down into the crypt."

"Crypt? As in stairs?" Lance shook his head. "Count me out."

"We must go," the girl said.

"Right. Hunk, Sven, come with me. Pidge, here." Keith passed off the gadget he'd been fiddling with, ignoring the brief flash of gratitude in his eyes. "See if you can get this to work."

"Sure thing, Captain." Pidge bent his head over the device and Keith turned away.

It was harder to use his eyes in the crypts, harder to ignore the nagging sensation of familiarity. Hard to ignore the little voice that whispered if he just let go, let the familiar sensations of being wrapped up in earth wash over him, he'd be safe. He'd be home.

He knew that was a lie.

The crypts on Arus stank just as badly as the dungeons on Doom, stank of death and age and pain, of blood and iron, of rot, of sickness. He forced his eyes to focus on the lantern the girl carried, to let the smell of burning oil fill his mind and drive out everything else. This wasn't Doom. He wasn't being led to a cell. There was nothing evil lurking in the shadows for him.

As long as he watched that bobbing blond head, he could almost believe the words.

"This way," the girl told him and he hadn't really needed her words to know the turnings and twistings that led them past the shelves of bones. He could have just followed his nose to where the death smelled freshest, followed his feet to the newest path, the one walked on most often, clear of the cobwebs and carpet-thick layer of dust that clogged every other corridor.

She must have cried over her father's bones quite often, he thought, and that made him warm to her a bit. A person who mourned her parents couldn't be all bad, couldn't be so very alien. Couldn't be evil like he'd known it.

"He told me that he holds the key," she said over her shoulder, and her words bounced off suddenly distant walls as the narrow corridor emptied out into a vast chamber draped with the rotting, moldering rags of ages of kings. "He said he was keeping it safe until a Champion came."

Her eyes glittered in the lamplight, and Keith had to look away because they embarrassed him.

No, she couldn't be evil, even if she was as crazy as a loon.

"Hunk, give me a hand," he said, and it was surprisingly easy to shift the heavy stone lid of this dead king's coffin. Easy, too, to reach in among his bones and shreds of cloth and feel for a bit of metal that wasn't there. He'd done worse in his time, and not all of it with the G.G.

His touch stirred up dust and the smell of death, but nothing else. Keith straightened, and shook his head. "It's not here."

"Impossible!" The girl -- and Keith supposed he should bother to learn her name at some point -- dropped the lantern she carried and rushed forward to her father's bones. "He promised," she cried. "He promised!"

The light bobbed as somebody picked up the fallen lantern before it died -- Sven, from the muffled cursing at burned fingers. His team cast weird shadows on the far wall that seemed to dance in time to the girl's sobs. Keith closed his eyes against the light, and opened his nose and it was easy enough to sniff out the key. Among his people it was said that the best diggers could sniff out flaws, smell where the stone wasn't as firm as it appeared to be, or where the crystal veins were worthless because of the impurities that ran through them. Keith didn't believe that, of course -- easier to believe in Santa Claus -- but he did know that every metal had its own unique smell, iron different from steel different from gold, and he'd always been very, very good at Find the Penny.

It was child's play to find the key's unique scent, and he let his nose guide him forward to the discarded stone lid, to the little groove on the underside and the key that slid easily into his hand. He opened his eyes, just a little, and let his fingers tell him everything he needed to know.

"Is this it?" He held the key out and.

It was his fault. It was his fault for not shutting down everything except his eyes, for letting the fact that he was so damn aware of the fact that they were deep underground lull him into a false sense of safety and security. For forgetting that with every breath he took, he was breathing death and rot and stale, recycled air, just like the air he'd breathed on Doom. It was his fault because how else did he expect this girl to act? He should have expected that she'd hug him, cling to him tightly, and he'd been a fool to think that the difference in touch alone would be enough to save him. She pinned his arms down, weighed his body down with her added weight, and she stank of lust and power and that was enough.

Keith moved like he hadn't been able to with Zarkon, throwing the body to the ground and pulling his gun in one smooth movement. He felt the tip of his barrel press against the body's forehead, growled out low and tense, "don't touch me. Don't fucking touch me."

The sound of his gun powering up was comforting.

It would be so easy to pull the trigger, and then the nightmare would end.

Something grabbed his wrist and Keith spun, lashed out with his foot, heard a muffled grunt of pain. The pressure on his wrist eased, slightly, and that was just enough to let him break the hold, spin away. One quick shot took out the light and plunged the room into darkness, trapped his enemies in his element. The three Doom guards were loud as they stumbled about in the darkness, cursing and shouting, and Keith grinned to himself. It would be easy enough to pick them off, kill them all then break his team out and escape from this hell.

He chose his shot carefully, but not carefully enough, because he heard only the sound of the laser cutting into rock, instead of flesh. He cursed under his breath and prepared to move. An errant step sent a rock skittering away, twisted his foot out from under him, and then there was something around his neck, choking him, and he struggled, clawed at the restraint around his throat, kicked back when he was lifted up of his feet.

"Saito, comma, Keith," he rasped out, and he wouldn't break, he wouldn't break. "Rank: Captain. Serial. Number."

It was getting hard to breathe. He felt light headed and tired, and all he wanted to do was sleep. His hands dropped to his sides, his legs dangled limply, all of his energy refocused to drawing in one more breath, and that was when he heard Pidge whimpering, soft and young and. No. Not again. He wouldn't let it happen again. He had to fight, had to stop this, and so he began to struggle, harder than before, wild and frantic and.

"Let him go," he tried to scream, but the words came out rasping and jagged, barely more than a whisper. "Please, please, I'll tell you anything. I'll do anything you want, just don't hurt him, please, don't hurt him again. Take me, please, please."

"Please," he continued to beg, until he could beg no more.

~

Lance closed the door to the infirmary just as Coran stormed up, bristling with rage, and Hunk and Sven moved to block the door. Not the smartest move in the world, because that just made Coran angrier and he had a very penetrating voice.

"Let me through!" The old man was trembling, and he tried to force his way past Hunk and Sven. "You will let me by!"

"No," Sven told him, and that stopped Coran short, made him draw himself up until he stood ramrod straight.

"You are here only at the pleasure of the Princess," Coran said. "Do not presume--"

"We won't let you in." Hunk set his feet, let his hands dangle free and loose at his sides, ready for anything. "He needs rest."

"He needs to be thrown into a cell! He's a menace!" Spittle flew from Coran's lips as he shouted, gathered like foam at the corners of his mouth. "He attacked the Princess!"

"Your princess shouldn't have touched him," Lance said, coldly. Coran stared at him, spluttering and stuttering and Lance sighed. "I'll explain everything, but not here." Coran opened his mouth and Lance cut him off before he could speak. "Not. Here."

"Very well." Coran turned on his heel, walked briskly away. Lance followed him, leaning heavily on his borrowed cane, Sven following behind. Coran pushed open a door and led the way into yet one more of the dusty rooms. This one had big windows and long benches and Lance hobbled over to one and sat down with a dusty sigh.

"Well?" Coran's voice was calm but his body still radiating anger. "Explain."

"Keith was tortured for information," Lance said, bluntly because there was no other way he could get through this. "And he was raped. Repeatedly, and on a daily basis. And not just by Zarkon." He looked at his hands, carefully ignored Sven because this wasn't something they talked about. This wasn't something they said out loud. "For the ten months of our imprisonment on Doom, Keith was subjected to things that I can't even grasp. Pidge saw a couple of them and." Lance shuddered, took a deep breath. "I know he died at least twice and that witch of Zarkon's brought him back. And from what Pidge told me, I think that was the easiest thing he had to endure." Lance rested both of his hands on the knob of his cane, looked up at Coran. "I've known Keith a long time, served with him for most of my career, and we've seen some terrible things. But this. This broke him."

"The fact of the matter is, he isn't completely healed yet, from the physical trauma, I mean." Sven rubbed at the right side of his face, dislodging the bandage and giving Coran a glimpse of the fresh laser burn on his cheek. "Look, I'm just a field doc, I've got enough training to patch my team up and send them back for real treatment. But I know that by all rights, Keith shouldn't be here, should be dead and worm food; should be missing a couple of fingers, and paralyzed from the waist down, at the very least. Doom magic might've erased those injuries from his body, but his mind remembers. He needs a place to heal up from that and right now, that place is Arus."

"Then he should be relieved of duty at once," Coran said. "He's unstable."

"If you do that, Keith will die," Sven said, and Lance envied the calm in his voice. "Right now, the only thing that's holding Keith together is the knowledge that we still need him. If he loses that, then it's only a matter of time before he breaks down completely."

"I won't let him pilot a Lion."

"If he doesn't fly, none of us do."

Coran jerked like he'd been shocked, stared first at Sven then Lance. "You would jeopardize an entire planet -- the entire Universe --"

Lance didn't need to look at Sven to know the answer; knew that Hunk and Pidge would say the same thing. He looked at Coran with steady, unblinking eyes.

"Yes."

~

Keith woke up disoriented and got himself tangled up in the bedding before he realized where he was. He rubbed at his temples, opened his eyes and winced at the light.

"What happened," he rasped, his throat raw; his mouth tasted like he'd been chewing cotton and his eyes were gritty and his shoulder felt like it'd been punched, which all added up to a shot from a tranq -- probably one of the ones Sven had taken to carrying around in what he thought was a surreptitious manner. He thought he knew why Sven had drugged him and he hoped he was wrong.

"You kind of lost it," Pidge told him, and Keith turned his head in the direction of the sound.

"How bad?"

"Scared the princess, scratched up Hunk's arm and gave him a black eye; I think he said something about a couple of cracked ribs, too. You winged Sven with a laser blast."

Keith nodded and swallowed, trying to work saliva into his mouth. "Where's everybody?"

"Lance and Sven are running interference with Coran and Hunk's standing guard outside." Pidge shifted in his seat, made the wood creak. "He thinks you're going to be pissed at him."

"Why?"

"Well, he kind of had to choke you." Pidge got off the chair, grabbed something off of a tray and held it out to Keith. "Water?"

"Thanks," he said, and he took slow, careful sips.

Pidge fidgeted, shifting from one foot to the other, and it was that more than anything that reminded Keith that Pidge was still just a sixteen-year-old kid, no matter how smart he was, or how mature he acted; that he wasn't really military, not like the rest of them, hadn't been trained in the same ways.

Reminded him that Pidge probably didn't want to be too near him right now, either.

The worst thing Pidge should have had to face at this age was puberty and pimples and hormones. Not this.

Never this.

"You don't have to stay," he said and pushed himself up into a seated position.

Pidge shrugged. "You shouldn't be alone. Can I...?" Pidge trailed off, then said, "D'you mind if I have a seat?"

Keith nodded and he was surprised when Pidge hopped up onto the bed next to him. Even more surprised when Pidge grinned and said, "Thanks, those wooden chairs are really uncomfortable."

"Pidge," Keith began, then stopped. Cleared his throat. Took another sip of water and. He didn't really want to do this, didn't want to talk about this, but he was obviously failing at the whole coping part and Pidge was the only person who'd manage to understand what he was talking about.

"Pidge," he began again, "how do you..."

"I don't remember."

Keith grinned, a little shakily. "Yeah, but, you can't forget all the time, right?"

"No, you don't understand. I don't remember. Anything." Pidge looked over at him, then away. "I remember the guards taking me away. And I remember being on the ship, but everything in between. Pfft. Nothing." He shrugged, took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses. "Defense mechanism."

"Handy," Keith said and Pidge shrugged.

"Why don't you hate me," Keith said after a while.

"Why should I?" Pidge blinked, and his eyes were very large behind his glasses. "I told you, I don't remember anything about the escape. But. I remember what you did for us." He looked down at his hands. "We got out because of you."

"It's my fault you were there in the first place." Keith scrubbed at his face. "All I had to do was get you six months combat experience and then ferry you back to the Brass for your promotion. Simplest fucking mission and look at how badly I screwed it up." He laughed, bitter and mocking. "I'll be lucky if I don't get reassed to a trash detail when we get back to Alliance space." He shook his head. "The Brass should have assigned you to someone else."

Pidge tilted his head to the side, just a little, and smiled a crooked little smile. "I asked to be assigned to your team, Keith. I wanted to have a real combat experience before I got locked away in a little room with a bunch of other whiz kids for the rest of my life. And. It was everything I wanted." He laughed, and it wasn't bitter like Keith's, but young and vibrant. "Besides, if I hadn't gone with you, I never would've gotten the chance to study these Lions."

"It's my fault you were --" Keith swallowed the word. "It's my fault you got hurt."

"I don't blame you," Pidge told him. He hopped off the bed and headed toward the door. "You should get some sleep, Captain."

He paused at the door. "I don't hate you," he said, again.

"You will," Keith said, when the door closed.

~

The wind carried the sound of Lance cursing as he climbed up to where Keith sat, back against the giant stone lion that topped this monument, so Keith was well prepared when he finally made it to the top.

"Had to pick the one spot with the most fucking stairs," Lance said between gulping breaths. He threw himself down beside Keith, then bit back an particularly descriptive oath as the action jarred his leg. He smelled of sweat and leather and soap, and Keith smiled at the familiarity.

"I hate being out in the open," he said, conversationally. "All that...space." He glanced up at the sky, then away again, and tightened his grip on the lion's paw. "Feel like I'm staring up at an unsupported shaft, just waiting for the roof to come tumbling down."

"So why don't you come in."

"You know, I'm so afraid, I can barely breathe?" Keith grinned, a little. "I can't think of anything but that emptiness."

They sat, for a while, and Keith couldn't help but notice the way Lance was very obviously not watching him.

"I'm sorry I got us all captured."

"Hey, don't go taking all of the credit. We kind of like to think of this as our collective fubar." Lance leaned back on his hands, looked out towards the lake and the raggaed gash in the forest that marked the site of their arrival. "Y'know, the view isn't bad from up here."

"Do you hate me?"

"Never."

"Do you pity me?"

Lance looked him straight in the eyes. "Never."

Keith nodded, and decided not to mention that he _had_ hired Lance for his lying abilities.

"So Pidge is going to snap," he said. "It's going to be bad."

"Hunk's working on it." Lance grabbed a small twig and used it to scratch underneath his cast. "Plus, he's young and it was Zarkon. He'll think that just the lizards are this cruel."

"He broke me, Lance. He broke me completely and if I hadn't been gagged." Keith drew a shaky, ragged breath, and the calm veneer that he'd almost managed to believe himself shattered like dew on a spider's web. His body trembled and every breath was a battle, sucked in in gasping, shuddering lungfuls. "He broke me."

"I know. It's okay."

Keith forced himself to look up at the vast, empty sky, at the dreadful nothingness that stretched, unbounded before him. The sunlight burned his eyes, but he stared until he pushed back everything except the mind-numbing fear of being outside without struts or beams or walls to protect him. It made him nauseous and he felt the world spinning beneath him, twisting and tilting on its axis like a runaway cart, taking the corners too fast and threatening to overturn at any second, but he knew how to handle this fear.

"Keith?"

"Yeah?" he said in a half-sigh, the word drawn out with his breath, still staring into the sky.

"I'm going to touch you. Is that all right?"

Keith nodded, once, and then Lance's hand was on his shoulder, just resting there, like it did just before he pointed out something particularly interesting.

"Things'll get...better," he said, stumbling and fumbling his way through the words. "You've just. It'll take some time. You'll see. Things'll be better."

And that was a lie Keith wished he could believe.


End file.
